March 25, 2012

We started working on a new game about two weeks ago. It's a single screen multiplayer game for 2-4 players where you play as scuba divers using your harpoon to collect fish are bring them back to your boat. You also have to face a number of hungry sharks who also have their hearts (and stomaches) set on getting the fish. You win the game by collecting a set number of fish before your opponents do. You can also win if all of your opponents are devoured by the blood thirsty sharks. And if you don't mind playing dirty you can help speed that along a bit by flinging the sharks at them with your harpoon gun.

We started the game at a secret lounge area at GDC and we didn't really have much of a plan of what we wanted to do with it. The only thing we knew about it when starting is that it was going to be underwater and there were going to be sharks. After adding in the divers and sharks, we thought a harpoon gun would fit the theme nicely and decided to make it work a lot like the ninja rope in liero. We used to play liero a lot as kids and using your ninja rope to fly around the level and pull your opponent always made for some fun games. So we decided to make the harpoon gun is the center of the game. Everything in the game can be latched onto and pulled including fish, sharks, the boats, and the other players.

I've also been trying to keep a closer log of the things I've worked on each day and take more screenshots in order to document the development better. Here are some of the screen shots:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8 (today)

The game is getting pretty close to being finished. We will have the first version of the game done by Friday since we are planning to have it set up at an event on campus called Arts Crawl. I'm excited to see people play the game, I'm really happy with how it's turning out.